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Disintegrate   /dɪsˈɪntəgrˌeɪt/   Listen
Disintegrate

verb
(past & past part. disintegrated; pres. part. disintegrating)
1.
Break into parts or components or lose cohesion or unity.  "The group disintegrated after the leader died"
2.
Cause to undergo fission or lose particles.
3.
Lose a stored charge, magnetic flux, or current.  Synonyms: decay, decompose.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Disintegrate" Quotes from Famous Books



... jealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When they hurled themselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments. When the Goths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar saw that by adroit management he could disintegrate this ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... enclosed in a wall, accidentally omitted in the diagram.) On the next stage, E 2, the fragments of the snakes break up into their constituent parts; the positive and negative bodies, marked d and d', showing a difference of arrangement of the atoms contained in them. These again finally disintegrate, setting free the ultimate physical atoms, identical with those obtained from hydrogen. The number of ultimate atoms contained in the gaseous atom of oxygen is 290, made up ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... expense is light enough to justify the free use of material. When this is the case, extreme fineness of all the stone is undesirable. There is the added cost due to such fineness and no gain if the finer portion is sufficient to correct the acidity, and the coarser particles disintegrate as rapidly as ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... a sharp and definite cream line be evident on the milk soon after pasteurization. If this fails to appear, the natural inference of the consumer is that the milk is skimmed. If the milk be heated to a temperature sufficiently high to cause the fat-globule clusters to disintegrate (see Figs. 22 and 23), the globules do not rise to the surface as readily as before and the cream line remains indistinct. Where the exposure is made for a considerable period of time (10 minutes or more), the ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... certain rate of vibration its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the atoms, following the Principle of Vibration, are separated into the countless corpuscles of which they are composed. And finally, even the corpuscles ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... amounts would be required for a large animal as to affect the durability of the skin. Clay and plaster being in a dry state very absorbent, will eventually rob of all oily matter any skin in contact with them. Such skins will crack, split and finally disintegrate as thoroughly as those having an excess of fat adhering ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... on his person. If I had not been carried away by my indignation just now I should never have taken him by the collar. I did remonstrate with him once, on the strength of his political bias. I said, "Look at us, why can't you profit by our example? We don't wish to blow up, but gently to 'disintegrate. We are mild, but firm. We never express a wish for revolution, but for reform. We are as active as anyone in bringing about the Millennium, but we don't desire to be shot into it head foremost, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting for itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the other intact. Most of the eminences of the earth have had this latter origin. It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. But ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... go from parts to wholes, we believe that beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence, and then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of mending. The argument is one of Professor Royce's proofs that the only alternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things or their complete union in the ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... man-kept affair. On the bed lay a large framed, exceedingly ugly looking man. His flesh was yellow and sagged loosely away from his big bones. The impression he gave was one of huge animal bulk, shriveling away in an unlovely manner, getting ready to disintegrate entirely. The man was sick undoubtedly. Possibly dying. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... are digested for several hours under heat and pressure with acid or alkali. There are three processes in vogue. In the most common process the reagent is calcium sulfite, made by passing sulfur fumes (SO{2}) into lime water. In another process a solution of caustic of soda is used to disintegrate the wood. The third, known as the "sulfate" process, should rather be called the sulfide process since the active agent is an alkaline solution of sodium sulfide made by roasting sodium sulfate with the carbonaceous matter ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... the very jaws of the lion to rescue the headless corpse of their martyred teacher from a prison grave. They bear it away and lay it reverently in its unknown sepulchre, and when they have done these last offices of love they feel that all is over. They have no longer a centre, and they disintegrate. There was nothing to hold them together any more. The shepherd had been smitten, and the flock were scattered. As a 'school' or a distinct community they cease to be, and are mostly absorbed into the ranks of Christ's followers. That ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... shot out to the trigger of the beam-thrower. Aimed by the telescope's adjustment, the ray that could disintegrate a giant space flier utterly flared out at his finger's pressure. Against the lambent brown a spot glowed red where the beam struck. But, warned by some uncanny prescience, the trespasser leaped aside in the ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat

... turbid water. Bowlders of 100 to 200 lb. in weight are dislodged and shot forward by the impetuous stream, accompanied by masses of the harder cement which meet in the fall, and by the concussion from the great bowlders the crushing and pulverizing agency required is found to disintegrate it. The heavy banks, of 80 feet and upward, are usually worked in two benches, the upper never being so rich as the lower, and also less firm, and therefore ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... being with a spinning movement, and a spiral would ensue. Again, the stars may not actually collide, but merely approach near to each other. If very close, the interaction of gravitation will give rise to intense strains, or tides, which will entirely disintegrate the bodies, and a spiral nebula will similarly result. As happens upon our earth, two such tides would rise opposite to each other; and, consequently, it is a noticeable fact that spiral nebulae have almost invariably two opposite branches (see Plate XXII., p 314). Even if not so close, the gravitational ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... Linga-Sharira, and Kama-Rupa, respectively, are the lower principles, which perish after the passing out of the higher principles at death. At Death the higher principles, or Triad, lives on, while the lower principles of Quarternary dissolve and separate from each other and finally disintegrate, along the lines of a ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... The merchant acted upon him as a sedative, and that day the Irishman took him in large doses, allopathically, for his talk formed an admirable antidote to the stress of that other burning excitement that, according to Stahl, threatened to disintegrate his personality. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as if they were trick neck whiskers and hair, as if they might at any moment suddenly disintegrate, as if the smoothness of his eloquence alone ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... importance, as will later on appear in connection with means for promoting felting properties. If a hair such as described, with the scales lying flat on the shaft, be treated with certain substances or reagents which act upon and dissolve, or decompose or disintegrate its parts, then the free edges of these scales rise up, they "set their backs up," so to say. They, in fact, stand off like the scales of a fir-cone, and at length act like the fir-cone in ripening, at last becoming entirely loose. As ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... slate should readily split into even laminae; it should not be absorbent of water either on its face or endwise, a property evinced by its not increasing perceptibly in weight after immersion in water; and it should be sound, compact and not apt to disintegrate in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... And this filamentary conductor required to be supported in a vacuum chamber so perfectly formed and constructed that during all those hours, and subjected as it is to varying temperatures, not a particle of air should enter to disintegrate the filament. And not only so, but the lamp after its design must not be a mere laboratory possibility, but a practical commercial article capable of being manufactured at low cost and in large quantities. A statement of what had to be done ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... interior, nor was it treated like the latter with a specially prepared material. The material employed for the walls was admirably suited for the purpose, being when dry almost as hard as sandstone and practically indestructible. The manner in which such walls disintegrate under atmospheric influences has already been set forth in detail in this report. An inhabited structure with walls like these would last indefinitely, provided occupancy continued and a few slight repairs, which would ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff

... nature we are studying on the surface; the aqueous vapour, the oxygen and the carbonic acid gas, are, however, constantly in combined activity, and above all the oxygen. And, whilst water, uniting its effects with those of carbonic acid, tends to disintegrate the parts of stones, the oxygen acts upon vegetable matter. And this great chemical agent is at once necessary, in all the processes of life and in all those of decay, in which Nature, as it were, takes again to herself those instruments, organs, and powers, which had for a while been ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... very early in American experience that without organization issues would disintegrate and principles remain but scintillating axioms. Thus necessity enlisted executive talent and produced the politician, who, having once achieved an organization, remained at his post to keep it intact between elections and used it for purposes not ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... fingers carefully worked in the still warm ashes, raking off the upper layers of leaves gently, so as not to disturb the bottom of the pile. Carefully he worked, until he had laid bare a long strip of what had been pasteboard. At his touch this, like the leaves, crumbled. But one end of it did not disintegrate. A tiny piece was unconsumed. From the ashes Charley drew forth a charred bit of greenish pasteboard. Swiftly but carefully he raked aside the burned pasteboard. Then he gave a little cry. On the ground, in the very bottom of the heap, was some candle grease. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... source of things—some water, others air, others fire, others the earth, he regarded them all four equally as the primal elements of everything. He believed that the world is swayed by two contrary forces—love and hate, the one desiring eternally to unite, the other eternally to disintegrate. Amid this struggle goes on a movement of organization, incessantly retarded by hate, perpetually facilitated by love; and from this movement have issued—first, vegetation, then the lower animals, then the higher animals, then men. In Empedocles ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... overgrown the pyramids in all directions, as though they had been mere natural hills. In Sicily one may see the lava fields of Etna planted with prickly pears: in the ordinary course of things, it requires several centuries before even the surface of this hard lava will disintegrate into soil; but the roots of the cactus soon crack it, and a few years suffice to break it up to a sufficient depth to allow of vineyards being planted upon it. Here the same plant has in the same way affected ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... of rock were split from the faces. The sides also became less vertical, and there was an accumulation of detrital fragments about their bases. These heaps of fractured stone had in some cases begun to disintegrate and form soil, on which there was a scant growth of vegetation; but the sides and summits, whose jaggedness increased with their height, were absolutely bare. "Here," said Cortlandt, "we have unmistakable evidence of frost and ice action. The next interesting question is, How recently has denudation ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... thought the span must disintegrate to follow—and it did not need to! It could move as a COMPOSITE as well as in UNITS. Move intelligently, consciously—as ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... the particles in some inks which are held together on the paper by gummy vehicles, commence to disintegrate and change from intense black to the brown color of iron rust, the "added" color which of itself is fugitive in character, soon departs; the vegetable astringent separating from the iron salt decays gradually and disappears and finally terminates in a mere stain or dust ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... as if the force was undergoing a process of decomposition, and would disintegrate. The morale of the men under the very depressing conditions which existed, had almost gone and they did not care what happened them. Privates, perhaps college men or wealthy business men in Canada, frankly said when arrested, that they were quite willing to pay the price, but that they had ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... like the geological changes of the earth, are slowly and continuously wrought. The waters, falling from Heaven as rain and dews, slowly disintegrate the granite mountains; abrade the plains, leaving hills and ridges of denudation as their monuments; scoop out the valleys, fill up the seas, narrow the rivers, and after the lapse of thousands on thousands of silent centuries, prepare the great alluvia for ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Ruth, because Susan had not Ruth's nature of the old-maidish, cut-and-dried conventional. But during the whole fundamentally formative period of her life Susan Lenox had been trained to order and system, and they had become part of her being, beyond the power of drink and opium and prostitution to disintegrate them until the general break-up should come. In all her wanderings every man or woman or girl she had met who was not rapidly breaking up, but was offering more or less resistance to the assaults of bad habits, was one who like herself had acquired ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... GRAINS.—All grains, with the exception of rice, and the various grain meals, require prolonged cooking with gentle and continuous heat, in order to so disintegrate their tissues and change their starch into dextrine as to render them easy of digestion. Even the so-called "steam-cooked" grains, advertised to be ready for use in five or ten minutes, require a much longer cooking to properly ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... him. I was aware only of the glowing circle, which seemed to widen and widen until the whole universe revolved within it. The sun and the moon and the stars were there, and I gazed at them as from a great distance. I saw stars glow and fade; I saw great nebulae condense to points of light, and disintegrate to dust; then, slowly, slowly, a single planet swung into view, a million miles away, at first, but growing clearer and more clear, until I was looking down upon its seas and continents; and suddenly, as it turned before ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... "Plato was a great thinker. In truth, the only incorrigible rogue is he who is devoid of ideals, who has allowed his ethical nature to disintegrate. Such a one ceases to be a person. He has lost the integrating factor—the moral—which binds human personality together. He is a mere aggregation of random impulses. The last stage of moral decay is impersonality. Impersonality sums up ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional dispute between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will not allow you to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders to disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhile you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... it will not be too open to loss of moisture by too free circulation of air. The best way to treat such a soil would be to use a tractor and plow to a full foot of depth, for this, followed by good harrowing, would disintegrate the hard stuff and commingle it with the loose surface soil and make it somewhat more retentive - doing this when the moisture is just right for disintegration and mixing. If you are not ready to go to this expense, a ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... figure out its character value because of the influence of other features—contradictory, inconsistent, supplementary. Just as the wisest man of his day took bribes as Lord Chancellor, so the finest face may be invalidated by some disharmony, and a fatal weakness may disintegrate a splendid character. Moreover, no one really studies faces disinterestedly, impartially, without prejudice. We like or dislike too readily, we are blinded by the race, sex and age of the one studied, and, most fatal of all, we judge by standards of beauty that ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... fashion in which that dainty sprite administered nourishment to her babies: she clung to the edge of the nest, and appeared to address herself to the task of charging an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun, using her beak for a ramrod, and sending it well home, violently enough, one would suppose, to disintegrate the nestling on whom she operated. If I had not read Mr. Torrey's description of hummingbird feeding, I should have thought the green-clad dame was destroying her offspring, instead of ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... stopped short amid a swirl of foam, and the next instant it seemed to disintegrate. It went all to pieces, just as had the dummy figure which Tom on one occasion fired at with his rifle and as had the big packing-cases. The whale appeared to dissolve, as does a lump of sugar in a cup of hot tea, and, five seconds ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... question of conditions. A whirlpool in a stream may remain in the same spot for any imaginable time. Yet it is the effect of the motion of the particles of the water in that spot which continually integrate themselves into the whirlpool and disintegrate themselves from it. The whirlpool is permanent while the conditions last, though its constituents incessantly change. Living bodies are just such whirlpools. Matter sets into them in the shape of food,—sets out of them in the shape of waste products. Their individuality ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... diffusion to take place so slowly that its effect was negligible; but when, on the other hand, the mortar was loose, the salts rapidly penetrated to the interior of the mass, where chemical changes took place, and caused it to disintegrate. The concrete blocks made with 1 to 3 mortar disintegrated in nearly every case, while the stronger ones remained in fairly good condition. The best results were given by concrete containing an excess of very fine sand. Mixing very ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... the professor. "But one thing, don't handle it much. It might disintegrate. I bid you farewell, ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... and Neptune; things raised by this earth's cyclones: horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodoes, moas, and pterodactyls; leaves from modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era—all, however, tending to disintegrate into homogeneous-looking muds or dusts, red or black or yellow—treasure-troves for the palaeontologists and for the archaeologists—accumulations of centuries—cyclones of Egypt, Greece, and Assyria—fishes dried and hard, there a short time: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... economic system is composed must therefore be self-motivating and self-acting. They must be "alive." If one part of the economic body is dead, the whole will eventually disintegrate and decay. ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... economy, namely: that boiling saves at least one fourth the volume of food, and that the broth which is produced, when properly managed, always gives the foundation for another meal. You should always bear in mind that the object of cooking is to soften and disintegrate food, so that it can be easily masticated; and to expand it, so as to present a large surface to the action of the digestive organs. In this connection you must open your eyes to certain physiological facts if you want your food to agree with you. I shall not tell you ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... pointed out Craven. "You could have wiped us out in a moment. You can disintegrate matter. Send it up in a puff of smoke ... rip every electron apart and send it ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... Through the ground. The trees ... disintegrate them ... all of them ... all you can reach. But not the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... of man, as we know it, not only justifies all these analogies, but seems to show that the modulus, the germ at least, of the spiritual body exists now within the physical; that it does not disintegrate when the physical body dies, but separates and coheres more closely than ever; and is still inhabited or possessed by ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... into being at the time when the political structure of the world, based upon the conquests of Alexander the Great and the achievements of Julius Caesar, began to disintegrate. They were present when the believers in Mahomet held sway in the Asiatic and African provinces which Alexander had once brought under the intellectual influence of Hellenism; while the Lombards, the West Goths, the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons had established kingdoms in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Farley, moving jerkily and staring with glazed unseeing eyes, was working there with a cube of the glittering k-metal. In the open breech block of the tube was a heaped-up cone of dry soil, the material they would disintegrate in producing the blast of electronic forces. Blaine groaned as his friend called for the equivalent of a milligram of radium. Though his voice was listless and his movements uncertain, Tommy knew what he was doing and was giving away the secret, powerless to resist the command Ianito had implanted ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... generations passed away and the older sepulchres crumbled into dust. The cemetery thus resembled the city; here, too, one generation built upon the ruins of its predecessor. The houses and tombs were alike constructed of sun-dried bricks, which soon disintegrate and form a mound of dust. The age of a cemetery, like the age of a city, may accordingly be measured by the number of successive layers of building of which its mound or platform is composed. In Babylonia they are numerous, for the history of the country ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... that they have a right to assist in making the laws which control the social relations. We are under the laws inherited from barbarism. They are not the conditions suited to the best exercise of the office of woman, and the women desire the ballot to purge society of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the home, the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or latent embryo of the body, confounded with it. But the Occultists regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death; is withdrawn—leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... economy has continued to disintegrate although Prime Minister KENGO has had some success in slowing the rate of economic decline. While meaningful economic figures are difficult to come by, Zaire's hyperinflation, chronic large government deficits, and plunging mineral production have made the country one of the world's poorest. Most ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... the ministry could maintain itself but a few months. December, 1852, found the Whigs again in power, where they remained until 1859, Disraeli using his talents the while to build up and consolidate the Tory opposition and to disintegrate the discordant elements, Free Trade, Liberal, Peelite, and Radical, who rallied under ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... to make colors merge into one another, to lower the values, but not all equally. Yellow loses itself first, tending toward white. The effect of distance, in general, is to disintegrate and decompose, thus giving "vibration" as it is called. A knowledge of these and kindred facts will save the architect from many disappointments and enable him to obtain wonderful ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... come from above. Ba'tiste abandoned the saw, and with one great leap caught Houston and pulled him far to one side, as with a roar, the spruce seemed to veritably disintegrate, its trunk spreading in great, splintered slabs, and the tree proper crashing to the ground in the opposite direction to which it should have fallen, breaking as it came. A moment Ba'tiste stood, with his arm still about the younger man, waiting for ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... McNamara's men, the night glared luridly as though a great furnace-door had opened and then clanged shut, while with it came a hoarse thudding roar that silenced the rifle play. They saw the cook-house disrupt itself and disintegrate into a thousand flying timbers and twisted sheets of tin which soared upward and outward over their heads and into the night. As the rocking hills ceased echoing, the sound of the Vigilantes' rifles recurred like the cracking ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... were beginning to lose their winter coats; our party began to disintegrate. My brother and the Judge were compelled to return to Detroit. A week or so later Ned Frost and the cook were scheduled to take out another party of hunters from Cody and prepared to leave us. Young and I were determined to stick it out until the last ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... electroplating dynamo, and the thin sheet of copper is connected with the negative pole. The electrolyte in the tank is a solution of sulphate of copper. The action of the current will cause the pure copper in the impure sheet to disintegrate and it is then carried over and deposited upon the thin sheet, this action continuing until the impure sheet is entirely eaten away. All the impurities which were in the sheet fall to the ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... conquered, in this particular field, he knows nothing of fragments and may say in all security: "Detach one if you can. You can analyse in YOUR way, oh yes—to relate, to report, to explain; but you can't disintegrate my synthesis; you can't resolve the elements of my whole into different responsible agents or find your way at all (for your own fell purpose). My mixture has only to be perfect literally to bewilder you—you are lost in the tangle of the forest. Prove this value, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... wholly wrong, however, to make linguistic drill the Alpha and Omega of this part of the college course. The preparatory years should have laid a sound basis, which during the college work proper should not be allowed to disintegrate, but the fact should not be lost sight of that the cultural aim must be stressed most ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... originally been held together by a lively expectation of the advantages to be obtained from the pillage of Manila. That hope had disappeared, and the leaders had become the lords of life and property each in his own province. It was a force which could disintegrate, but which could not surrender. Only armies can do that. Forces over which their leaders have lost all except nominal control when beaten do not surrender. They disintegrate by passing through the stages of guerrilla warfare, of armed bands of highwaymen, of prowling groups of thieves, of sturdy ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... explosion followed the shot. Cappy Ricks, gazing popeyed with horror, saw the submarine disintegrate and disappear in a huge water-spout; when the water settled only a vast and widening smear of heavy fuel oil showed where she ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more. We're talking nonsense. Come ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come to an end. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... southern belt of this formation is wonderfully cavernous, especially in its upper beds, which being more argillaceous, and impregnated with earths and alkalies, are disposed to produce salts, which oozing through the pores of the stone effloresce on its surface, and thus tend to disintegrate and scale off, independent of the solvent effects of the carbonated water. Beneath overhanging ledges of limestone, quantities of fine earthy rubbish can be seen, weathered off from such causes. In these ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... the nostrils Crumble me, Eat me deep; And my garments disintegrate: First my nightgown, Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed, Sprawled about the bed in postures meaningless ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... plants, to put it simply, the leaves are the mouths and stomachs of the organism; their thin and flattened blades are spread out horizontally in a wide expanse, covered with tiny throats and lips which suck in carbonic acid from the surrounding air, and disintegrate it in their own cells under the influence of sunlight. In the prickly pears, on the contrary, it is the flattened stem and branches which undertake this essential operation in the life of the plant—the sucking-in of carbon ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... element in this division was that of personality. Taking up the second bond of union, that of the central, controlling idea and purpose, we find the whole movement at the present time is tending to disintegrate through the expansion of this idea. This is shown by the continual departure of men from the ranks of the Army, who see that its methods and machinery are too cramped for their efforts, and also by the different ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb

... was still in possession of it. The seeming liberality of England, however, may not have been more disinterested than the scheming of Spain and France in this affair. England did not believe that the United States could exist as a permanent government, but that the confederated States would disintegrate and return to her as colonies. The King of England said as much when the treaty was made. If, then, the States were to return to England as colonies, the more territory they might bring with them the better, and hence a large grant was ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... disintegrate the New Testament writings and set the apostles against one another is founded on a revival of the claim of the Judaizers that their propaganda had the sanction of Peter and the other original apostles. In a Handbook like this it is impossible to discuss ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... touchstone, and furnishes (if you will tolerate the simile) the only elective affinity in moral chemistry. Because ingots are not dug out of the earth, is it not equally unwise and ungrateful to ridicule and denounce the hopeful, patient, tireless laborers who handle the alloy and ultimately disintegrate the precious metal? Even if the world were bankrupt in morality and religion—which, thank God, it is not—one grand shining example, like Mr. Hammond, whose unswerving consistency, noble charity, and sublime ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... its connection with the etheric and physical bodies, which still remain united, whereas at death the separation of the physical from the etheric body takes place. The physical body is abandoned to its own forces, and must therefore disintegrate as a corpse. At death the etheric body finds itself in a condition in which it has never been before during the time between birth and death,—with the exception of certain abnormal conditions to be dealt with later. That is to say, it is now united with the astral body in the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... old fort of St. Mark and the greater part of the city are built. It is said to become harder when exposed to the air and the rain, but to disintegrate when frequently moistened with sea-water. Large blocks were lying on the shore ready to be conveyed to the fort, which is undergoing repairs. It is some consolation to know that this fine old work will undergo as little ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... still rarer vampire is drawn. The lost entity would very soon after death find himself unable to stay in Kamaloka, and would be irresistibly drawn in full consciousness into "his own place," the mysterious eighth sphere, there slowly to disintegrate after experiences best left undescribed. If, however, he perishes by suicide or sudden death, he may under certain circumstances, especially if he knows something of black magic, hold himself back from that awful fate by a death in life scarcely less awful—the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... a noisy chorus. The crowd began to stir and disintegrate and break into groups, gesticulating, talking, discussing all the astonishing items of news given by the engineer, from the particulars of the Sorensons' depravity to announcement ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... skeletons are left within the Tower to disintegrate by action of sun and wind, heat and cold. In time the bearded men, gloved and with tongs, remove them to a vast well in the middle of the enclosure, where with lapse of time ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... is their most instructed individuals, could move through opposing things, as well as over them, up into them and across them. This power these possessed in a two-fold form. I mean, that they could either disintegrate their bodies at one spot and cause them to integrate again at another, or they could project what the old Egyptians called the Ka or Double, and modern Theosophists name the Astral Shape, to any distance. Moreover, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... German occupation, was undergoing one of the severest trials that the nation had ever experienced, not excepting revolutionary oppression and the Spanish Fury. The Germans used every means in their power to disintegrate the people's unity, break its resistance and enlist its services. Terrorism was used, from the first, at Aerschot, Louvain, Tamines, Andenne and Dinant, whilst the invasion progressed towards the heart of the country. Then, under the governorship of Von Bissing, the method was altered, and attempts ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... important of the phagocytes just enumerated are the leucocytes. They embrace and enfold the pathogenic germs with which they come in contact by what is known as an ameboid force. They enclose, disintegrate and absorb the enemy. It is well known that the moment the leucocytes are submitted to an alcoholic solution, their ameboid movements cease, and their function is arrested. It is plain that their phagocytocic power is immediately destroyed. It is possible, also, that the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... on the earth. It is fortunate for us that our atmosphere absorbs most of this ultra-violet or invisible light of the sun—a kind of light which will be explained presently. It has been suggested that, if we received the full flood of it from the sun, our metals would disintegrate under its influence and this "steel civilisation" of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... tendency, which was also, by the bye, a Christianising tendency, was a strong disposition, derived from the Rousseau strand, to leave other peoples alone, to facilitate even the separation and autonomy of detached portions of our own peoples, to disintegrate finally into perfect, because lawless, individuals. The official exposition of British "Liberalism" to-day still wriggles unstably because of these conflicting constituents, but on the whole the Whig strand now seems the weaker. The contemporary Liberal politician offers cogent criticism upon ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... exuberance of our bodies and the sheer delight of playing a game. We must have some ulterior motive—usually a sordid one, getting money or downing the other fellow; and most of the time we have to drive our poor, old rackety bodies with a whip. About the time a man begins to vote, he begins to disintegrate. The rest of life is gradual running down, or breaking ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... served as entering wedges into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy—to cleave it, disintegrate it, and let the light of Christianity into it—none perhaps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology. In one very important respect the history of this science differs from that of any other; for it is the only one whose conclusions ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... California, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would then "disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... held together for more than a century. Not till the decisive victory of the Northumbrians at Chester (A.D. 607), and that of the West Saxons at Beandune (A.D. 614) was this Cymrian federation finally broken into three fragments, each destined shortly to disintegrate into an ever-shifting medley of petty principalities. Yet in each the ideal of national and racial unity embodied in the word Cymry[372] long survived; and titles borne to this day by our Royal ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... reliance and utter leaning, however, has a certain tendency to disintegrate the will, and by so doing it prepares the spirit to be a melting prize of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that expression he wore—the indulgent amusement of a man of the world—began to disintegrate and show signs of change. It became finely grave, as of a high conventionality, lofty, assured, and mannered, as he approached the Pike mansion. (The remotest stranger must at once perceive that the Canaan papers could not have called ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... from the fire, he rapped sharply on the trunk. Then slowly what had appeared to be a portion of the hole began to disintegrate, and in a moment a drowsy porcupine climbed rattling ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... had practically all wanted to go if required, but the Government had interposed and, as we have already quoted, it was not a question of who should go, but who must stay at home. And they were greatly needed here, for nothing is gained by consolidating the Empire abroad if we allow it to disintegrate right under our eyes and around our own threshold. The Pax Britannica—the orderliness of British rule—had to be preserved in the vast spaces of the North and West of Canada. Thousands of potentially lawless men were surging through our mining country in the Yukon, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... They didn't just disintegrate when peace broke out, that was for sure. And there certainly weren't any of them left on Poictesme. He puzzled over it briefly, then shoved it aside. He had more ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... are alien thoughts, human thoughts, and they falsely indicate that I do not want this tramp to go on living. What would become of me if he should disintegrate? My molecules would scatter all around and take up new quarters in hundreds of plants and animals; each would carry its special feelings along with it, each would be content in its new estate, but where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling left, after ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... sun-dried brick. The roof is thatched and the floor is the beaten earth, although in the better houses it is stone or brick. In time, the mud-plaster or, if the walls are of sun-dried brick, the wall itself begins to disintegrate. But it is let alone, as long as it does not make the house uninhabitable, while paint is unknown. So the general appearance of a Chinese town is squalid and tumbledown. Even the yamen of a district magistrate presents crumbling walls, unkempt courtyards, rickety buildings and paper-covered windows ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... has continued to disintegrate, although Prime Minister KENGO has had some success in slowing the rate of economic decline. While meaningful economic figures are difficult to come by, Zaire's hyperinflation, chronic large government deficits, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... or desire for further productive activity of its own. (Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... then, at leisure, set out in their permanent places. Just before doing this an ordinary beer can opener is used to enlarge the punctures in the bottom of the can to permit the roots to penetrate better. In a few years the can should disintegrate entirely and at no time ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... dark, Davilof?" she asked in a practical tone of voice calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler



Words linked to "Disintegrate" :   decompose, crumble, digest, dissolve, fall apart, unravel, modify, alter, pulverize, powderise, change integrity, run, disintegration, powder, powderize, disintegrative, change, break apart, crash, break up, pulverise, integrate, physics, natural philosophy



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